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Rasa and its Pleasurable. Nature
words, love-bites tootli-marks and nail-marks-ilthough physically painful give pleasure to women,) The aesthetic experience of grief or sorrow in poetry, in Kavya (creative literature) is different from the grief or sorrow as directly experienced by people in the actual life. To explain : Sahrda as turn more and more to experience this aesthetic grief or sorrow. If it were only painful like the grief or sorrow in the real world (actual life) thien nobody would ever think of going to witness plays or reading poems full of the sentiment of pathos. (For it is an axiom that every being strives to secure happiness and shun misery or pain.) Consequently, then such great and celebrated works as the Ramayana, etc., which predominantly depict the sentiment of pathos would have fallen into oblivion and lost. The shedding of lears etc., by the spectators (or readers) on listening to the description of a sud or tragic incident or event in a work of art, like the sledding oi tears, etc. through sorrow over the death or loss of one's beloved person in actual life, is not at variance (with the view mentioned above). Therefore, Karuna-rasa (the sentiment of pathos), like the ollier rasas of śộngara (che sentiment of love) etc., is certainly plcasurable."
But of all the Sanskrit alamkarikas, it is Abhinavagupta who repeatedly speaks of the pleasurable nature of rasa. Before setting forth his view in detail it is necessary to notice two other theories mentioned, and refuted by him. After refuting Sankuka's view that rusa is the reproduction (anukaraña) of mental states he briefly refers to the Samkhya theory of Rasu. According to the Saṁklıyas, rasa is made of pleasure and pain and is nothing but a combination of various clements (tlie vibliarus, anubhāvas, etc.), possessing the power of producing pleasure and pain and that these elements are only external (bahya), i.e., they are not psychic or mental states (citta-vitris). According to this theory, there is no differonce between rases and stayi-bhavas (permanent mental states). The advocates of this theory are naturally forced to give a metaphorical interpretation of all the passages in which Bharata distinguishes rasa-s from citta-vftris (perinanent mental states). The very fact that the Samkhyas have to resort to a forced interpretation of Bharata's' passages shows that their thcory is unsound.
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Towards the end of his comment on Nalyasatra, VI. 33-Abhinavagupta attacks Sankuka and his followers who hold the view that raser is the reproduction of permanent mental states like "rati (love), etc: "Sonic people argue that rasa is the reproduction of imitation of permanent mental states like love (rati).ctc., indtlicy thus go on to ask tries
